Good morning friends, wishing you all a happy and...

Good morning friends, wishing you all a happy and healthy week ahead. wanted to share an important information today. I was called upon to review a patient at another hospital with low hemoglobin. he is a 54 year old gentle man who is taking a drug called acitrom which is a blood thinner (anticoagulant) for deep vein thrombosis DVT where blood clots are formed in our veins. Once we start taking this blood thinner we need to regularly check how this is our blood by a test called Prothrombin time PT. If our blood gets more thin then we can land up with a bleeding inside and this is what precisely happened to our patient and he bleed profusely in his abdominal cavity and hence his hemoglobin came down to just 4 gm/dl (normal should be above 14). This can be life threatening and then we had to give plasma called FFP which we procure from blood bank. This happens when we donot regularly check our PT time test or other causes are irregular diet, alcohol intake etc. The patient is stable as of now and we have advised him regular blood check. take home message is very simple 1. when taking anticoagulants like warfarin or acitrom please check you PT/INR test regularly from a reputed laboratory. 2. don't binge on alcohol. 3. many medications can interact with these drugs and always consult your doctor before taking other medicines with warfarin or acitrom. I hope above information was helpful. Pritesh Junagade Lotus Hospital Nashik